Abstract:
This study examines the subjectivity of the narrator in Diderot's Jacques le
fataliste et son maître. The authoritative and subjective voice of the narrator in
this text affects the narration of the story in such a way that it is difficult to
classify this work as pure fiction. This research seeks to elucidate the various
ways in which the narrator's subjectivity manifests itself in the narrative.
Specifically, it focuses in distinguishing between subjective discourse and pure
narrative both from the linguistics aspect and through the component of point
of view. The analyses carried out in this study reveal that the subjectivity of the
narrator in a narrative text is signaled through certain linguistic elements and
that their discursive properties in the novel text blur the boundaries between the
fictional world of story and the factual world and at the same time produce a
reading effect that is felt by the reader as stranger to the novel genre. In the end,
this study shows that the fundamentally subjective style of the narrative is an
aesthetic technique used by Diderot to simulate oral communication in the
narrative text in an attempt to reduce the effect of fiction and to create, through
this maneuver, an essayistic illusion in the mind of the reader.
